Home media and back up storage

[blitz_911]

Hi, I am looking at building/buying a multibay NAS storage device for the home. I do some photography as well so i need to have all our media files and large photos in one centralised place.
I have been looking at some 4 bays drives as this will give me some room to expand in the future, but im not looking to spend mega bucks.

the bay i have been looking at is the Buffalo LinkStation Pro Quad http://www.ebuyer.com/507103-buffalo-linkstation-pro-quad-ls-qvl-e-eu

A quick google search reveals that its perfomance specs aren't great but as an entry level NAS drive i seems ok.

Things i would like to know are:

should i spend a bit more and go for one with better performance? i will back up our current videos etc onto the nas storage device to access over our wired and wirelss network. i dont know if i need to set up media serving on the nas drive to enable this or if we can just access it over the network like a shared drive. Also for streaming to the ipad, we currently use vlc streamer, would i need a new app to stream videos to it?

i would like to organise regular back ups of our 2 main computers, how would i go about this, would the drive come with software to do this (or should i get one that does) or can i organise through windows 7 on the main pcs to back up to the NAS.

I am planning on installing 2x 2tb hard drives initially, one as my main drive and as a back up, is this a sensible way to do it? what does raid do, will it create one back up drive automatically, and will it back up as an identical drive or a disk image file which i can restore from. will the back ups be smaller than the full sizes of the original drives ie will 2tb be capable of backing up a 1tb pc 500gb pc and 2tb storage.

when considering drives to populate the NAS, are spin speeds and sata 6 connectivity irrelevant due to the limiting factor of performance likely to be the processor and ram of the NAS. would a slower spin speed drive make less noise, are the drive "designed for nas" just a marketing gimmick. is hard drive spin down an essential feature to have on a NAS.

Lots of questions i know, thanks fo your help!

 

[popatim]

What backs up the NAS?
Never trust 1 device to store all your important files.
Nas's cant typically backup one of its internal drives to another of its internal drives. I would suggest you download the users manual and read it. A 2tb usb might be a better backup solution.

Buffalo linkstations usually come with nova backup software.

For streaming you will have to read reviews, I have no idea.

Raid basically makes 2 or more drives act as one large drive, called an array. Raid modes above 0 offer redundancy which means a drive can dies without losing the array. Losing an array means all the data on it is lost as well. In a raid 0 if a drive dies so does the array. Raid does not replace a backup. It is meant to keep the system running in the event of drive failure. Redundancy comes at a price, losing the space of one to two drives to store the extra data. lose 1 drive with raid 5, two with raid 10. Recall raid 0 has no redundancy so no wasted space, just higher potential to lose the array.

Drive speed or sata type wont matter with most nas's as even a 5400rpm drive should be able to keep up with a single gigabit lan connection. I have 8 drives in my home built NAS running windows server and none of them are NAS ready drives. LoL. Its not a requirement but supposedly they are designed better to last longer plus they are raid compatible whereas most consumer desktop drives are not.

 

[TyrOd]

What backs up the NAS?
Never trust 1 device to store all your important files.
Nas's cant typically backup one of its internal drives to another of its internal drives. I would suggest you download the users manual and read it. A 2tb usb might be a better backup solution.

Buffalo linkstations usually come with nova backup software.

For streaming you will have to read reviews, I have no idea.

Raid basically makes 2 or more drives act as one large drive, called an array. Raid modes above 0 offer redundancy which means a drive can dies without losing the array. Losing an array means all the data on it is lost as well. In a raid 0 if a drive dies so does the array. Raid does not replace a backup. It is meant to keep the system running in the event of drive failure. Redundancy comes at a price, losing the space of one to two drives to store the extra data. lose 1 drive with raid 5, two with raid 10. Recall raid 0 has no redundancy so no wasted space, just higher potential to lose the array.

Drive speed or sata type wont matter with most nas's as even a 5400rpm drive should be able to keep up with a single gigabit lan connection. I have 8 drives in my home built NAS running windows server and none of them are NAS ready drives. LoL. Its not a requirement but supposedly they are designed better to last longer plus they are raid compatible whereas most consumer desktop drives are not.

All good details here, though I would add that the difference between NAS drives is that they are less likely to fail during a rebuild and are generally more physically stable under 24/7 operation than low power consumer drives. I can't say that there's much of a difference in terms of failure rates compared to a black series drive with a 5 year warranty, but compared with 2/3 year warranty drives they are going to be somewhat more reliable in the mid-long term.
If you're going to eventually use RAID5 or 10 in this NAS, I would suggest not doing so with consumer drives.

 

[blitz_911]

That's what I assumed about raid but I wasn't sure. I'm quite surprised that you can't back up to another hard drive within the nas. So alternative solutions would be to have an external hard drive to back up the nas. I really wanted to minimise the number of boxes I have hiding behind the tv! And also in that case I prob don't need 4 bays. 2 bays with upto 8tb capacity would prob be sufficient.

With regards to back ups would backup software create an ISo image style file to load onto a new drive in the event of a failure? Would the back up be substantially smaller than the size of the drive backed up or would it be about the same size? Thanks again!

 

[TyrOd]

That's what I assumed about raid but I wasn't sure. I'm quite surprised that you can't back up to another hard drive within the nas. So alternative solutions would be to have an external hard drive to back up the nas. I really wanted to minimise the number of boxes I have hiding behind the tv! And also in that case I prob don't need 4 bays. 2 bays with upto 8tb capacity would prob be sufficient.

With regards to back ups would backup software create an ISo image style file to load onto a new drive in the event of a failure? Would the back up be substantially smaller than the size of the drive backed up or would it be about the same size? Thanks again!

With a NAS you may be able to set up two independent disks but it depends on the NAS box.

If you can set up two independent disks and map each individually, then theoretically you can set one as the source and the other as the target for a backup with a significant performance hit.

As far as making a backup, it depends entirely on what you prefer. You can make everything from a sector by sector backup to a full backup with subsequent differential only backup. You can vary the schemes a lot depending on what you want to back up and how often.

 

[blitz_911]

A weekly or montly back up would prob be sufficient, i like the idea of subsequent differential back ups although i would have no idea how to go about that. If i down size on the nas bays and start off with 2tb i should be able to buy an additional external drive to back up onto. can you give me an idea of what size external drive i should be looking at to backup to? does it need to be the total size of the back ups?

 

[blitz_911]

having has a quick read up on raid, setting up a nas with raid 1 would mirror the disks so in the event of a failure the is an exact copy of the drive, however you lose half of your storage capacity, and am i right in understanding that write performane is poor because you have to write to both disk every time.
Why would there be a large performance hit if you were to set up the drives independantly within the nas and set oune as the source to backup to the other?
size wise what is the most efficient way to back hard drives up, obviously outright mirroring takes the full capacity?

 

[krazyglue2k]

I'm currently using the Netgear Readynas (have both a pro 6 and NV+) and both accomplished my goals which are similar to yours. Using them as a repository for files, a source for backups (windows 7 PC), media streamer (using plex), and iscsi target for my ESXi hosts. Would highly recommend them.

As far as initial storage, I would try to go with 3x 2tb HDs and run them in a raid 5 configuration. That being said, one of the cool features of the readynas is the RAID X configuration. Its a neat concept that automatically readjusts the RAID to disks that you add to give you the best performance/reliability. So if you started with just two disks mirrored and later added a 3rd disk it would automatically adjust to a RAID 5. They also have a one touch backup you can utilize by plugging in a USB drive and smashing the button on the front. The software will let you control the shares or files it backs up. I've just setup an RSync job that automatically backs up shares from the Pro 6 to the NV+ for my backup.

As far as spin of the drives, I'm currently using lower end WD green drives in the NV+ and 7200 spin Seagates (desktop version) in the Pro 6. Both have been up and running for a few years now with only one issue of a drive going bad. Performance wise, I can see a difference but that is mostly due to the hardware in the different NAS devices.

Hope that helps..

 

[popatim]

Please keep in mind that no form of raid is a replacement for a backup and important files should always have a backup or three.
Raids intention is to keep the system up in case one of the drives dies.

In the case of raid 1 if you, your kids, wife, or virus, deletes important files they were automatically deleted on the other drive as well - no backup there.
A true backup is one you can powerdown and remove from area. It won't be there when that million volt lightning strike comes down the line and fries your drives. You plan for the worst and pray it never happens. My pictures and videos of my family are my most precious and I keep many backups of them; one is even in my sisters basement in case we lose the whole house. One of hers is in my basement. LoL

 

[blitz_911]

Losing files by deletion I'm not too worried about, it's outright hard drive failure or when I ah heck the pc by messing about with it too much.

However since I'm investing in a set up from the start it makes sense to back up fully to a removable external drive. Is it worth considering a better 2 bay nas like a symbology or qnap and backing up to something like a USB 3 3tb hd.

Again what I would really like is for the 2 main computers to back up on a regular basis automatically so maybe to have an external wired up the the router or directly to the nas. I could unplug it and plug it back in once a month to prevent it getting fried in case of a lightning strike lol.

Would I be able to map an external hd plugged into a nas and back up from the main pcs via the nas or should I just plug it into the router? Or I could back up both pcs and nas onto the nas and back that up onto the external.

In proportion to disk size or amount of information backed up, how much size do different back up methods take?